Clementine’s innocence had swept through his life like a scented breeze over a barren landscape, a metaphor he clung to as strongly as his cologne-infused handkerchief, now pressed to his face as he turned in to the dense and pungent chaos that was Soho. The daily sewage-laden miasma of the Thames was now blowing in from the south, and in the unusually hot summer the stench in this densely populated borough was particularly disgusting.
Despite living in the comparative luxury of spacious, green, and quiet Mayfair, D’Arcy was constantly drawn to the vibrancy of Soho, the bustling narrow streets with their tailors, leather-curing factories, coffeehouses, and inns as well as the once-grand mansions of Golden Square, now reduced to cheap housing in which whole families often lived in one room. But there was a warmth and rhythm to the place that the promenades of Mayfair lacked—a borough controlled and austere in its wealth. This seething mass of striving humanity was exotic to D’Arcy. And as a member of the titled classes, he could afford to indulge in its corrupt pleasures and, most important, get out when he wanted.
Indeed there was one particular prostitute he was fond of visiting who lived on Golden Square—a practical Irish wench who had scraped together the flimsy trappings of respectability. It was to here that D’Arcy, after a spiritually uplifting but frustrating evening with his fiancée, would often return, if only to enact upon the lady’s rented body fantasies he knew he would never be able to execute upon Clementine’s slender, lily-white frame. And it was at this very harlot’s window that D’Arcy now found himself staring, his feet having guided him there by pure instinct. “No, I shall resist,” he told himself, knowing that taking out his anger or frustration upon the prostitute would be counterproductive and, knowing her rates and his purse, economically disastrous.
“I really will confront Clementine. As suspicious as I am, I’m sure there is a completely innocent explanation—pure coincidence, for example.” It was an argument that failed to convince even him.
Nevertheless he glanced wistfully back up at the window—the ironically named Prudence O’Malley was a comely girl with an earthy sensuality matched by an earthy laugh. She was also very good at the amusing but erotic scenarios D’Arcy found entertaining. In short, despite the heat of the afternoon, it would have been a very pleasant distraction from the young biographer’s current troubles. The memory of their last encounter, during which D’Arcy had donned a leather saddle at her command so that she could ride him and whip him, made him harden. He waited until his tumescence had lessened into some semblance of decency, then walked on—ah, the glorious dictatorship of a young body; I remember it well!
• • •
“What exactly are you trying to say, my love?”
Clementine, wearing a rose-colored day dress, was perched very becomingly on the edge of a chaise longue, fingering the beaded fringes of her shawl; her escort, an ever-present maiden aunt, sat at a discreet distance in a window seat, theoretically absorbed in her embroidery. It was not an atmosphere conducive to either whispered confessions or confrontation. D’Arcy cleared his throat nervously. “I find that I now face potential professional catastrophe, one that could prevent me from being able to support you in the manner to which you are accustomed once we are married.”
“Oh goodness”—Clementine yawned prettily, displaying rows of pearly white little teeth—“it does sound tiresome. What kind of catastrophe? I thought you had finally finished with the great heroic literary tome you had embarked upon.”
For a moment it occurred to D’Arcy that if his fiancée hadn’t been so imbued with both beauty and youth, he might care for her personality a little less, but like a cloud passing over the sun this observation was quickly lost and forgotten. “I have told you the subject of my biography, have I not?” he inquired dryly.
“You have, the extraordinary adventures and life of one Joseph Hanks, I believe,” she replied, now fanning herself. “The heat today is quite remarkable, remarkable and tiresome. But my love, you’d think if Mr. Hanks was so extraordinary he would have had at least two surnames and a title.”
Really, D’Arcy thought to himself, if her lips weren’t quite as red, her skin quite as pale, and if those blond tendrils that framed that catlike face not quite so perfect, he might have taken her for being petulant and perhaps even a little stupid. On the other hand, he was comforted by the observation that if she couldn’t even remember the name correctly, she was surely unlikely to have passed on the subject of his biography to her uncle.
“His name was Banks, Sir Joseph Banks, and he was, by the time of his death, one of the most significant English figures in science of his times, my dear. But I’m sure such details will only give your pretty head an ache, insignificant as he is in yo
ur delightfully girlish world, Clementine.” Indeed, it was the seeming purity of the trivia of this world that had attracted D’Arcy to Clementine in the first place. Although lately, to his faint amazement, he’d been finding her lack of intellectual curiosity an irritant. “However, you wouldn’t by any possible chance have told your uncle Horace about my biography? Mentioned Joseph Banks and my name in the same sentence, for example?” he asked, studying his fiancée’s face closely. Clementine’s expression appeared unchanged, although if our young biographer had been a little less infatuated and a little more astute, he might have noticed her fingers tightening around the handle of her lace fan.
“Now, why would I do that? I hardly see my uncle, and certainly not alone,” she protested, now waving her fan furiously at one flushed cheek.
“But you mentioned he escorted you to Ascot only last week!”
“He did? I had quite forgotten.”
“Just as you might have forgotten mentioning to him that I was writing the definitive biography of Sir Joseph Banks!” D’Arcy, unable to contain his frustration any longer, exploded. Behind him he heard the sound of Clementine’s aged escort dropping her embroidery; it hit the parquet floor with a clatter.
Clementine’s large blue eyes seemed to magnify as they filled with tears. “I am sure I have not!” she protested. It was the first time in their two years of official engagement that either of them had raised their voices to each other and already D’Arcy was filled with remorse.
He edged forward and took her trembling hands in his own. “You have to understand, Clementine, that not everyone is as innocent and without guile as yourself. Your uncle and I have a history that I have tried to explain before. We are in commercial competition. I am Brutus to his Caesar.”
“You mean to kill him?” Clementine’s eyes widened even further and one tear, welling over the edge of her thick eyelashes, splashed down her cheek.
The sight gave D’Arcy a secret erotic thrill. Appalled to discover he found such power so exciting, he cursed his tight breeches as he crossed his legs. “I mean that if your uncle has discovered I am writing about Joseph Banks, he might take it upon himself to match me with a biography of the gentleman himself.”
“He would not. Uncle Horace is a perfect sweetheart, and he knows I am engaged to you.”
“But, Clementine, he has! This was the professional setback I have been trying to explain to you. My publisher has received rumor that your uncle is also writing a biography of Banks! It is a calamity!”
“So there will be two books about the same man; how can this be so terrible?”
“Because your uncle is far more established than myself; his biography will have precedence over mine, with both the newspapers and with the reader. Six years, Clementine, six years of my life—and it is ruined! Are you absolutely sure you didn’t, by accident, mention something to your uncle?”
Furious, the young woman rose, one hand worrying the emerald engagement ring he had given her. For a moment D’Arcy grew terrified that she might be about to pull it off to throw at his feet. In perfect synchronicity, her aged aunt also rose. The two women stood poised like figures from a Greek tragedy in the center of the large Regency drawing room, until Clementine held out her hand imperiously to D’Arcy. He kissed it formally.
“At this moment I have nothing more to say to you,” she announced and then, with a small nod, dismissed him.
• • •
D’Arcy strode down Regent Street, the tails of his morning coat flying behind him. Normally its wide promenade and sweeping elegance never failed to elevate his spirits, functioning, as it were, as a lodestone of wealth for the struggling writer. But today was different. Today he felt as if the mannequins and the displayed luxurious fabrics and dresses, the objets d’art, the tailored suits, the gold fob watches glinting through the shop-front windows all represented a club whose membership had just been cruelly and unjustly snatched away from him, snatched away by one man and one man alone. Horace Tuttle.